Tag Archives: Frank Duncan

Elizabeth Duncan’s plea of not guilty by reason of insanity would ultimately fail. She was interviewed by shrinks and she even submitted to a brain wave test, but nothing about her tests indicated that she was insane. Dr. Louis R. Nash, assistant director of Camarillo State Hopsital, described Elizabeth Duncan as a “psychopathic personality” and a “pathological liar”, but said that she sane.

On January 30, 1959, Luis Moya withdrew his not guilty plea and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Gus Baldonado would quickly do the same. And, just like Ma, they would be found sane.

One of the most difficult tasks was to find jurors who could be fair and impartial. During voir dire many of the prospective jurors revealed that they had already made up their minds and felt that the defendants were guilty. In fact, Ma and Frank received a lot of hate mail. A news photo arrived for Ma with multiple epithets scrawled in red ink: “Hope you hang.” “You should have died before you were born.” “Cutthroat.” “I could kill you.” “Apron strings.” “Mamma’s boy.” An anonymous letter posted in San Francisco said:

“Your daughter-in-law was a fine, clean, decent person. She and her unborn child was murdered. I hope the state will execute those involved in that crime. It was a cruel, rotten deal.”

The jury of eight women and four men was finally seated. They must have felt their responsibility acutely, it was, after all, a death penalty case and they were charged with determining Ma’s guilt or innocence. There was bad news for Ma, three of them had admitted to believing her guilty before hearing a word of testimony! When Ma got the news that the jurors had been selected she was asked if she thought she could get a fair trial. She didn’t think so, she said that there were too many people against her.

The trial testimony was as gut wrenching as the grand jury testimony had been. In particular, Luis Moya seemed to want to talk. Moya said that he and Baldonando had been introduced to Mrs. Duncan through Mrs. Esperanza Esquivel, the operator of the Tropical Cafe in Santa Barbara. Equivel would act as the go-between.

Moya testified:

“She (Elizabeth Duncan) told me she had acid, rope and sleeping pills if we decided we could use them. The pills were to be for an overdose, the rope to tie her and the acid to disfigure her (Olga Duncan) face and fingerprints”

The plan Moya and Baldonado came up with was to kidnap Olga and take some of her clothes to make it appear she’d gone on vacation. They were going to dispose of her near Tijuana.

Ma pawned a ring to give Moya $175 for expenses.

About the night of the murder, Moya said:

“I knocked on the door and asked if her husband was Frank Duncan. She said ‘Yes’. I said I had met him at a bar, and that he was pretty drunk and had a lot of money on him. I said I had him in the car and wondered if she would help be bring him up.”

She said ‘Sure, I’ll help you bring him up.’ When she opened the door of the car I hit her a blow over the head with the pistol to try to knock her out.

“It was a very hard blow, but I didn’t knock her out. Baldonado grabbed her and I shoved her into the car.”

Moya said he drove down to the Cabrillo Highway near the beach. Olga was still screaming and Baldonado was hitting her with the pistol.

“I stopped the car and told Baldonado to give me the pistol. I hit her a heavy blow on the head and she passed out. Baldonado taped her hands.

The car they’d rented from a friend for $25 wasn’t working well. They stopped twice before selecting Olga’s final resting place.

Moya said:

“It was a pretty good place to bury her. We didn’t think she would be found. We dragged her out of the car.”

When asked if Olga was still alive, Moya said that she was. Moya told the hushed courtroom that because he’d broken the gun over Olga’s head, they’d decided to strangle her. He said:

“We decided to strangle her until she was dead. We took turns strangling her and hit her with a rock.”

Ma’s friend, Emma Short, testified to overhearing threatening phone calls made by Ma to Olga. When she was asked about the relationship between Ma and Frank, Emma said that he often called his mother “doll” and she’d heard him promise many times “I’ll never leave you.”

While no one had mentioned incest directly, there were many oblique references to it in the questioning of witnesses about the relationship between mother and son. Short was asked about the sleeping arrangements in the two bedroom apartment shared by Frank and his mother before the marriage. She told the court:

“Mrs. Duncan’s bedroom could be seen from the living room. Frank was lying in her bed. She came out and said, ‘Isn’t he beautiful?'”

At last Ma took the stand. She testified that she had once plotted to tie up and kidnap Frank! She felt that if she got him away from Olga he’d snap to his senses; however, she continued to deny that she threatened Olga or ever intended to harm her.

The courtroom was thrown into an uproar when Ma’s past was exposed during cross-examination by the D.A.. She had been married about 16 times, and had failed to get an annulment or divorce for many of them. The D.A. also revealed that she had six children! Ma acknowledged 10 of the marriages, but she said she couldn’t recall any of the others.

When she was asked about her relationship with Frank, Ma said it was one of love and devotion. The D.A. asked if she loved Frank more that her other children, she replied: “Yes”.

Next to take the stand was Frank Duncan. He testified that:

“I loved my mother and I love her still.”

He continued to support Elizabeth’s story throughout the trial.

One of the trial shockers came when Ma was asked by the D.A. if she had worked as a madam to put Frank through law school and she shouted “No!” The D.A. persisted in his questioning:

“Well, that was your occupation, wasn’t it?”

Ma responded:

“I didn’t consider it an occupation. It was a position.”

While Ma’s personality was revealed during the trial, it was difficult to get a handle on Frank — what he knew, when he knew it, and exactly what kind of man he was. He was in law school when Ma was running a brothel and he must have known what was going on. How did he feel about that? He never said.

There were, however, a few tantalizing glimpses into Frank’s personality.

He became angry and actually rose to object when the D.A. taunted him by calling him “Frankie”. He left the courtroom in tears during Luis Moya’s testimony in which he recounted the details of Olga’s monstrous death.

Frank admitted that he’d dated a woman in San Francisco during a business trip while he was married to Olga. He didn’t bother to tell his date that he was married. Apparently Frank couldn’t be faithful even for the six month duration of his marriage to Olga. What was even more surprising was that Frank married again, secretly, during Ma’s trial! If there was one person in the case that was a cipher, it was undoubtedly Frank.

On March 16, 1959, after 4 hours and 51 minutes of deliberation, Ma was found guilty. Moya and Baldonado were found guilty at their trials as well. All three were given the death penalty.

Frank fought for his mother until the end. In fact he wasn’t at her August 8, 1962 execution because he was in San Francisco at the Federal Court arguing her case.

Ma Duncan’s last recorded words were said to have been: “Where’s Frank? I want to see my son.”

Elizabeth Duncan, Luis Moya, and Gus Baldanado were busted on December 19, 1958 for conspiracy to murder Olga Duncan. Bail was set at $100,000 each (the amount is equivalent to over $7 million 2013 USD).

Two days later, on December 21st, the cops went public with an appeal to help them find Olga Duncan’s body. The public didn’t have to do a thing because Gus Baldanado confessed that same day and implicated Luis Moya and Elizabeth Duncan. He also led them to Olga’s body in Casitas Pass. Luis Moya would also confess to his part in the slaying. Ma, however, was adamant that she was not guilty.

If Santa Claus had any presents for Frank Duncan he was going to have a tough time finding him because the attorney mysteriously vanished on Christmas Eve. District Attorney Roy Gustafson would have better luck with a subpoena requiring Frank to testify before the grand jury — Ma’s son was located in a Hollywood apartment.

According to testimony during the grand jury hearing, Ma had approached at least four people with various plans to kill Olga.

Mrs. Barbara Reed, a carhop at the Blue Onion Restauant in Santa Barbara, said she had been acquainted with Ma for at least ten years. She testified that in August 1958 Ma had asked her if she would “…put her (Olga) out of the way becasue she was interferring with Frank’s future”. Ma told Reed that she had plenty of acid and anything else that might be needed to deal with Olga. Ma wanted Reed to go to Olga’s apartment and throw acid in her face! Ma said that she’d hide behind Reed and as soon as Olga had a face full of acid she’d throw a blanket over the injured woman, drag her out to the car, drive her up to the mountains and push her over a cliff! Reed was offered $1500 for her trouble.

Barbara Reed said she realized that Ma had gone crazy and rather than cross her she told the older woman she’d think about the offer. Instead Reed phoned Frank the following day and asked him to meet her at the Blue Onion.

Reed testified:

“The very next day I asked him to come out tot he Blue Onion. He came out and I said, ‘This is very important. It is sort of a real dangerous matter here.’ He said ‘Are you in trouble?’, and I told him what his mother had come up with and I said ‘You have got to do something about her, Frankie. This girl is in danger and I think your mother had gone crazy.’ He said, ‘You know it, too.’ I told him to do something with Olga, either get her out of town or take her some place where she would be safe. He said ‘I will do what I can.’ That is all he said.”

Ma had also discussed Olga with her close friend, eighty-four year old Emma Short. Short said that she had first heard of Olga Duncan after Elizabeth had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and was confined to Cottage Hospital. Short said that Elizabeth told her that after she’d recovered from the overdose Frank had promised he wouldn’t marry Olga.

But of course Frank married Olga in spite of his promise to his mother. Emma Short said that Elizabeth told her, “My son will never live with Olga. I will kill her first, destroy her.”

Emma’s testimony was riveting:

“…she (Elizabeth) asked me to go over to Olga’s apartment and try to get her to come to my apartment. When she got to my apartment, she would have her sit in a chair that goes against the closet. She (Elizabeth) would be in there. Then she would take a rope and put it around her neck and choke her and throw poison in her eyes.”

When asked if she had ever mentioned any of her conversations with Ma to Frank, Emma said:

“No, I never did. Mr. Duncan is a man that is very hard to approach and I had very little to say to him at any time.”

A woman named Diane Romero also came forward to testify to the grand jury about her conversations with Elizabeth Duncan regarding Olga. Romero had first met Elizabeth while Frank was defending her husband, Rudolph Romero, on a narcotics possession charge.

Diane said that Elizabeth Duncan had mentioned her hatred for Olga and how much she wanted to get rid of her. Diane’s testimony was a chilling account of the depth of Ma’s hatred for her daughter-in-law.

“…she (Elizabeth) gave me $5 one time to go buy some lye for her bathroom. I didn’t pay too much attention. After, when se did start talking about getting rid of Olga, she told me that she wanted the lye so that she could put Olga in the bathtub, put some water in the tub and pour lye over her so that you couldn’t recognize her, make her dissolve or something.”

Mrs. Romero and her husband, Rudolph, met with Elizabeth to discuss another of Ma’s plans for Olga. According to Diane, Elizabeth offered her husband money to get rid of Olga.

“…it was either $1000 or $1500, something like that. He said no, that he didn’t want anything to do with it and then we left. Later she came to the hotel with me and she kept raising the price. She said $1000 at first, then it was $1500 and she raised it to $2500.”

Rudolph Romero corroborated his wife’s testimony.

Just in case hiring an assassin didn’t pan out, Ma had a back-up plan. She made an appointment with a local doctor and tried to get the physician’s office manger, Mary Ann Dowhower, to go out with Frank.

Mary Ann testified that:

“She (Elizabeth) would flash pictures of Frank and she wanted me to go out with him, to come home for dinner. She wanted me to become his girl friend and possibly his wife, since he was interested in someone and she didn’t know who and she didn’t want it to go any further than it had gone. I didn’t keep the appointment. She pushed me too much.”

Finally, Frank Duncan took the stand and his testimony was an uncomfortable peek into the dynamic between mother and son. He revealed that his mother didn’t want him to marry at all, ever. And while Frank’s memory seemed to be very good, it failed him at some crucial moments. When he was asked if his mother had raised any objections when he began dating Olga, he stated that he didn’t recall.

Frank went on to describe his living arrangement following his marriage to Olga. He said that he lived part of the time with his mother, and part of the time with Olga. After the newlyweds moved to the Garden Street apartments he said he went home to Elizabeth Duncan each night with few exceptions. When he was asked why he didn’t stay with Olga continuously, he said:

“Well, sir, my mother, when we first got married, used to call me a lot at the office and I understand she called my wife sometimes, and my wife and myself, we just had an understanding that I was to stay home until shortly before the baby arrived.”

Frank further testified that after he married Olga, Elizabeth purchased a gun and threatened to take her own life. He took the gun from her and she promised him she would return it to the pawn shop where she had bought it. As far as Frank knew, Ma had returned the little pearl-handled .22.

The horrific testimony given during the grand jury hearing resulted in the indictment of Elizabeth Duncan and her co-conspirators, Luis Moya and Gus Baldanado for the slaying of Ma’s pregnant daughter-in-law, Olga.

Ma did one of the only things she could do under the circumstances — she decided to enter a plea of insanity.

Olga Duncan accompanied Luis Moya out to the car where she expected to find her husband Frank in a drunken stupor. She thought she saw him stretched out on the backseat of the beat-up Chevy so she reached in to awaken him, and then everything went black.

Luis Moya bashed Olga Duncan over the head hard enough to knock her out, and Gus Baldanado dragged her into the back seat of the car — but she was a fighter with a compelling reason to live, she was pregnant. Whenever she regained consciousness and began to scream and struggle Ma’s hjired killers beat her until she passed out.

On the way out of town Luis and Gus realized that the 1948 Chevrolet they’d rented from a friend for $25 wasn’t up to a trip to Tijuana as they had originally planned. They headed south on Highway 101 and drove a little over ten miles to Carpinteria, then went another few miles to Casitas Pass Road. Gus recalled using the road to get to a winery near Ojai. By the time that they stopped they were almost seven miles into Ventura County — it was quiet, dark and deserted.

Luis and Gus dragged pregnant Olga out of the car and down a small embankment. They couldn’t shoot her because they’d broken the gun over her head during one of the beatings they’d given her. Instead, they took turns strangling her until Baldanado, who had been an Army medic, decided that she was dead.

The men were so pathetically inept that they had neglected to bring shovels, so they dug a shallow gave in the soft silt near a drainage ditch with their bare hands; then they buried Olga and her unborn daughter. Olga was still wearing the wedding ring that Frank had given her.

Baldanado was as lousy a medic as he was a hit man because Olga hadn’t been dead when they covered her body with dirt. The beatings hadn’t killed Olga, and neither had the attempted strangulation. She had suffocated to death. Olga had been unconscious but alive when Luis and Gus had buried her.

Olga was discovered missing by a friend and colleague of hers, Adeline Curry, chief surgical nurse at St. Francis Hospital. She went to Olga’s apartment after the young nurse had failed to show up for an important operation. Curry was alarmed when she found the door to the apartment ajar. All the lights were on and the bed covers had been turned back, but the bed had not been slept in. Olga was gone.

Olga’s landlady, who refused to be identified by name for fear of retribution, said she had met Mrs. Elizabeth Duncan on one occasion when she’d come by looking for Olga. The landlady said that Elizabeth was raving and declared that she would kill Olga if it was the last thing she ever did. Then Elizabeth told that landlady that her son and Olga weren’t married at all, that they were living in sin. When the landlady challenged her, Elizabeth snapped: “All you have to do is check with Ventura. The marriage has been annulled.” The landlady told police and reporters that Olga was deathly afraid of her mother-in-law and she frequently moved to stay one step ahead of her.

Upon being notified of her disappearance Olga’s father, Elias Kupczyk, turned over to Santa Barbara police letters he’d received from his missing daughter telling of Elizabeth’s constant death threats. Elias was soon on his way from Canada to Santa Barbara to aid in the investigation.

The fraudulent annulment was discovered when attorney Hal Hammons unwittingly drew up the papers for Elizabeth and a mysterious man named Ralph. Hammons had rushed the annulment through the same day as a courtesy because Elizabeth was Frank’s mother. When Hammons phoned Frank later and asked if he had represented him in annulment proceedings, Duncan told him absolutely not. Hammons contacted a Ventura District Attorney Investigator, Clarence Henderson, who began to check out the information he’d been given.

The D.A.’s investigation revealed that the annulment was a fraud perpetrated by Elizabeth Ann Duncan. Ma was promptly arrested on charges of bribing a witness to influence testimony, falsifying a legal paper, forgery with intent to defraud and aiding and abetting a “Ralph Roe” in making false statements under oath.

While Ma Duncan was facing charges related to the fraud two men, Augustine Baldanado and Luis Moya, were arrested . Police refused to say if the men were part of the inquiry into Olga’s disappearance.

Ma appeared in court represented by her dutiful son, Frank — in fact the two walked in together hand-in-hand. Frank successfully won Elizabeth a reduction in bail from $50,000 to $5,000. He argued that the Santa Barbara and Ventura County authorities needed to “put up or shut up” with their insinuations that his mother had anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of his wife.

“Things reaching my ears indicate there may be a homicide change in this case. Mrs. Duncan obviously had some concern about Mr. Duncan’s wife and did things that were not normal unless she had an intense dislike for her.”

Ma refused to comment on any phase of the case on the advice of her attorney/son.

Frank was either a complete idiot, delusional or, more likely, in denial regarding his mother’s involvement in Olga’s disappearance. He told reporters that he believed his wife to be alive. He went on to say:

“Truly that is my hope. At one time she threatened to cause me some unpleasant publicity but this would seem to be going to the extreme.”

Reporters asked Frank if he’d go back to live with his wife if she returned, he said: “I sure would.” Frank was also asked if his mother had been unhappy with his marriage to Olga or had tried to break it up; he replied: “Let’s say she hindered its development.”

How did Frank feel about Ma’s possible involvement in Olga’s disappearance? He stated that he didn’t believe for a minute that Ma had any guilty knowledge:

“Since that time (of Olga’s disappearance) and before she was taken into custody I cross-examined her closely about Olga’s disappearance. She said she knew nothing about it. I know her and she would not lie. I’m quite certain that she had nothing to do with it.”

Frank had no insight into why Elizabeth had taken the drastic measure of faking an annulment, and he refused to make any comment.

On December 19, 1958, Mrs. Elizabeth Ann “Ma” Duncan was formally accused of hiring Augustine Baldonado and Luis Moya, for $3000, to murder her daughter-in-law.

R.W. Cooley [Photo from Santa Barbara Police Department.]

The cops had kept a tight lid on their investigation of Olga’s kidnapping when finally, on December 21, 1958, they went public with an appeal to help them find the missing bride’s body. Santa Barbara Police Chief R.W. Cooley said that the information he had about the alleged murder and disposal of the body was based on information obtained in questioning friends of the suspects. Cooley said:

“The body was disposed of early on the morning of November 18, probably between the hours of 12:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. It was placed beside or under a pipe. This pipe may have been loose, and was near a post. The automobile used to transport the body, and probably parked nearby while the body was disposed of, was a 1948 faded, dirty beige four door Chevrolet. It had blue primer spots on the hood.”

Chief Cooley figured the 5 a.m. cut-off time based on statements of witnesses that it was dark when Baldanado and Moya returned to Santa Barbara. The two were overheard to say that they had “finished Mrs. Duncan’s job.”

NEXT TIME: Frank Duncan goes missing. Olga Duncan’s body is discovered. Elizabeth Duncan, Luis Moya and Gus Baldanado are indicted for the murder of the young bride and mother-to-be.

Alan Freed, the DJ who coined the term Rock and Roll, found himself in the middle of a scandal in which record companies and artists paid to have their records played on the air. The scandal would become known as Payola. Rock and Roll may have been a recent phenomenon, but it was fast becoming a lifestyle. Jerry Lee Lewis became the first rocker bad boy when he married his 13 year old second cousin.

No wonder the parents of teenagers were worried.

Johnny Stompanato

On April 4, 1958, Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death at Lana Turner’s Beverly Hills home by her teen-aged daughter, Cheryl Crane. The fourteen year old was acquitted.

During the summer of 1958, Sheb Wooley’s Purple People Eater provided the sound track for backyard barbecues and family fun as kids and their parents learned how to keep their brand new Hula Hoops spinning.

Getty Images.

There was one small family in Santa Barbara, California during the summer of 1958 whose members weren’t having much fun at all — in fact they were headed toward murder.

Mrs. Elizabeth Ann ‘Ma’ Duncan was a doting, hands-on mother. Maybe a little too hands-on if the rumors that swirled around her were true.

Ma’s son, twenty-nine year old Frank, was the object of her affection — more to the point, the object of her obsession. Frank still lived at home with Ma and they were a cozy twosome, which was exactly how she planned to keep it. But the family dynamic changed radically when Frank fell in love with a pretty young nurse.

In 1957, Frank, who was an attorney, decided that it was time to strike out on his own and leave Ma. After all, he was a successful young man and he needed to untie his mother’s apron strings. Ma’s reaction to Frank’s declaration of independence was to pitch an unholy fit, and then overdose on sleeping pills. If filial love and obligation wasn’t sufficient to keep Frank at home, maybe a heavy dose of good old-fashioned guilt would do the trick. Ma had calculated correctly, Frank returned to her side — at least for the period of her convalescence.

During her recovery, Ma was attended by an attractive twenty-nine year old nurse named Olga Kupczyk. Frank was smitten. He stuck close to Ma, but closer yet to Olga. Ma didn’t need her glasses to see what was going on right under her nose. Ma would do anything to hold on to Frank. Anything.

Frank began dating Olga and Ma took it badly. Nearly every day Olga received a phone call from Ma telling her to leave Frank alone. When the admonitions didn’t work, Ma began making death threats. Ma even creepy crawled Olga’s apartment. She used a ruse to gain entrance into the apartment because she wanted to see if any of Frank’s clothes were there. It’s not clear if she found what she was looking for, but on her way out of the building she told the manager: “She is not going to have him. I will kill her, if it is the last thing I do”.

Elizabeth went apoplectic when she found out that Frank and Olga had secretly married on June 20, 1958. She declared that she would never allow the couple to live together!

Frank was so used to being dominated by Elizabeth that when she turned up at the newlywed’s apartment one evening and demanded that Frank leave with her, he did!

Frank and Ma Duncan

If I’d been in Olga’s shoes I would have dumped Frank’s clothes on the porch, changed the door locks, and filed for a divorce. But Olga stuck it out. During that summer Frank said that he was “…going back and forth like a yo-yo”. The man needed an infusion of testosterone.

Apparently Frank was just enough of a man, and had just enough alone time with Olga, for her to become pregnant. Elizabeth told Barbara Reed, whom she’d known for several years, that Olga had become pregnant by another man! Ma said Olga was trying to “frame” Frank. She offered Reed $1500 to help her kill her hated daughter-in-law. Reed contacted and Frank and told him about her conversation with his mother. Frank moved back into Ma’s home.

In mid-August 1958, Elizabeth came up with another crack-pot plan to end Frank’s marriage to the now pregnant Olga. She talked an ex-con, Ralph Winterstein, into portraying Frank in a fraudulent scheme to get her son’s marriage annuled. Ma and Ralph, portraying Olga and Frank, presented themselves at an uncontested hearing during which Ralph as the plaintiff in the case testified that Ma had not lived with him since their marriage, and that she had no intention of doing so. Ralph was granted an annulment.

The annulment was only the first step in Ma’s plan to get rid of Olga. Next she had a friend approach Winterstein (the faux Frank) and ask if the man would be willing to “take care of Olga”. Winterstein declined. He would have reported the incident to the cops, but he was too afraid of being nailed for the fraudulent annulment.

It took weeks, but finally a woman named Emma Short put Ma in touch with two guys who were greedy enough, and dumb enough, to kill Olga for her; they were twenty-one year old Luis Moya and twenty-six year old Gus Baldonado. The two hitmen were told that Olga was a blackmailer; they could have cared less, they didn’t need any motivation other than money to brutally murder a pregnant woman. Ma agreed to pay them $3000 once the job was done, and then another $3000 within three to six months.

The plan was for Moya and Baldanado to kidnap Olga, drive her to Tijuana and kill her there. Ma fronted the killers $175 for expenses.

On the evening of November 17, 1958, Moya and Baldanado rented a car from a friend for $25. They drove to Olga’s apartment and Moya rang the bell while Baldanado waited in the car. When Olga came to the door Moya told her that Frank was drunk, that he’d passed out, and he needed help.

Olga accompanied Moya to the car. It was dark and she couldn’t tell at first that it wasn’t Frank on the backseat. Olga opened the rear door, and Moya hit her hard on the back of the head with a pistol as Baldanado dragged her into the vehicle.

Ma’s plan to be rid of her rival was working perfectly.

NEXT TIME: The search for Olga ends, a fraud is revealed, and Ma and the hitmen are busted.